Love What You Feel is back, and the family is expanding! LWYF-005 is a various artists EP featuring jams by four master craftsmen of house and techno whose music has been a mainstay in the record boxes of the label heads for years. Santiago Salazar, Lerosa, Moonstarr and J Fine.
Nicolas Cantu makes a welcome return to Sequencias with The Lost Tribe—a brisk 808 workout with lush synthwork and psychedelic acid stylings. This is a more breezy approach compared to his work on other labels yet spares none of the imaginative or emotive qualities. On the flip side, label head JM De Frias offers up the dissonant groover The Light as a follow up to his debut track from Levon Vincent’s acclaimed Fabric mix CD. Brash percussion collides with staccato melodies awash in echo and organ, sustaining an intensity that never quite boils over. The two team up for the closer The Last Light, an atmospheric epic of growling strings, breathy ambience and melancholy stitched together with creaky, decrepit acid stabs and brittle percussion. This is the beginning of an on going collaboration between the two, keep your ears open in the near future.
Russia’s official policy and attitude towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender people has fallen down a slippery slope. This is a compilation by 24 left-field techno producers to raise money, awareness and show our support to the Russian LGBT people.
The Glasgow-based label Clan Destine Records with the second release in the series Clan Destine Traxx. Optimo Music’s Golden Teacher are heavily involved, contributing a track in “Cedar Eels” that feels like an extension of their polyrhythmic endeavours for JD Twitch’s label. In addition some of the band appears under the Tropic Of Capricorn banner with the straight up acid techno banger “Helen Gilgrist” whilst Stefen Blomeier might just steal the show with the K’ed up Daphni stylings of “They Have No Place In Paradise”.
Orlando Voorns Flight EP features four tracks of pure electronic funk. The Flight 313 track was already released by Orlando on his own label but only digital. Due to high demand we’ve put it on limited black gold for all you fans out there! It comes with a special beatless version as well. As if that ain’t enough Flight EP also features Cheater. A bold house track with that special Voorn funkyness in it which will move everybody on every dancefloor. Last but not least is Strings. With its beautiful strings and continuous drive this is a track you will play to the last minute over and over again. All in all, a highly recommended release which deserves a special place in every recordcase.
18 Months after serving up his debut LP ”Fallen”, D’Marc Cantu returns to his other home from home, Crme Organization. He’s back with a six track EP, Alternate Frequency, that sees him explore the same prickly analogue house and techno that has made him into the revered producer he is today. The title track opens up the EP with fizzing analogue synth lines and a nervous, howling melody before acid, muffled vocals and coarse claps all get chucked into the dense sci-fi mix. ‘Size And Shape’ is a more propulsive and dancefloor facing track. Surfing along on a lively kick drum, repeated vocal phrases interact with choppy percussion, glowing pads light up the backdrop and a delightfully lively melody runs amok at the centre of it all. Like an old school garage house track in overdrive, its full of charm. ‘Straight Shooter’ is then a zithering, 100 mile an hour piece of skeletal acid techno that grows ever more frantic and ‘Tazakuro’ is a lively analogue brew of cowbells, freewheeling synths and tumbling drums. Titanium Control Arms lurks deep in outer space with the humdrum of intergalactic space travel gurgling all around the central melodic motif and ‘Speed Freak’ is just that, a hyper-driven bit of electro with frantic percussion and riddled with unnerving synth lines that makes you want to jiggle every bone in your body.
Chicago’s Beau Wanzer known for his work with Mutant Beat Dance and Streetwalker makes his debut on L.I.E.S. with his first solo EP. Wanzer who has been involved in the underbelly of American electronic music for many years, cut his teeth working at Magas’ now defunct Weekend Records and Soap. Through that time Wanzer constantly worked on music amassing a sizable studio where he worked in various electronic strains creating an impressive body of work. These tracks come from different points of his career and are stripped down functional pieces made for the dj even if that was not their initial intention.
Dixon Avenue Basement Jams present their first various artists release, the self-explanatory DABJ Allstars Vol 1. Two unheralded names share the billing for this one, TX Connect and CT Trax; the former delivers “TX Acid”, a tuff 303 jam for sweaty basements, and “Ghetto 972”, a slamming piece of house with its eye on the more raucous end of the 90s, while CT Trax presents “Redline”, a driving techno belter filled with phased synths, and the standout “Jack Attack”, which distils classic Dance Mania down to its most primal rhythmic elements.
UK electro pioneer & Breakin Records label boss Ed DMX contributes to the binary catalogue with 7 tracks of dystopian electro funk
Adam Cummings aka Binny with a new release on Orbis Records. UK-based and clearly influenced by the Detroit sound, he manages to translate the combination of hardware & his skills for arrangement into something special. This EP contains two must have tracks for the floor on the A-side full of 909 drums, 727 stabs, cowbells, hats & the riffs from the Alpha Juno. The B-side gets another character, his deeper inner side where he pulls of to touch emotions in a Parallel World along side Stephen Browns take on “No Surrender”.
Turbo Warehouse Series continue with Gingy & Bordello, backed by a killer remix from Robert Hood. Saturday Night Fervor silkily wraps itself around wiggly disco-inflected samples that guarantee hand raising and foot stomping in equal measure. This is the kind of fun, soulful, inclusive party bomb that makes the world go round.
Dance Mania presents a collection of 6 classic Jacking Chicago tracks from the legendary Robert Armani.
Nik Dawson, better known as Bookworms, releases the follow up to his African Rhythms single. This three song 12″ titled ‘Japanese Zelkova’ is a divergence from his last record in some sense, whereas the former was based around dusty crunched out samples and programming, this release is more focused on the man/machine element. That is not to say there aren’t pieces of his past work in there. If you let the title track play on you’ll see what we mean.
Mysterious producer Gerstaffelen here debuts on Dutch label MOS Deep with The Old Villagers, a four track EP of grainy analogue house. The title track opens things up at a mid tempo house pace. It’s a dense, multi-layered track with plenty of squiggly synths, bobbling analogue basslines and radiant pads. ‘Game On Major’ is slightly more frenzied, with dusty hi hats looping over fairly frenzied synth sounds and some hints of acid are buried deep within this hazy sound world. ‘Little Green Munchkin Men’ gets even more unhinged and techno leaning with the sounds of various analogue machines all meshing together into a nebulous brew of off killer melody and curious metal hooks, before last track ‘When The Mind Stops’ brings a bit of raw old school house flavour to the table. The beats jack, some muffled vocals add an important human element and like everything on the EP the track invites you to lose your shit in the most beguiling of ways.
Here you go! A surprise edition of the Hipodrome Podcast series, a back2back session from Muzikalist and Maxi Clash aka Eugene Efimenko and Maxim Falaleev, two young DJs, musicians and promoters based in Kaliningrad. They forged down a “Guide To The Dark” with more than two hours of acid house and techno.
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